Modularity

 When we talk about prefab housing, a common fear arises: “Won’t standardisation make everything look the same?” This fear confuses standardisation with sameness. A well-designed system doesn’t constrain creativity – it can actually liberate it. Consider the classical Chinese garden: a world of whimsical charm and deep artistry, where no two gardens are alike. Far more than a mere outdoor space, it was a personal universe: a library for the scholar, a studio for the artist, a quiet retreat for meditation, and a gracious setting for hosting friends, enjoying music, and staging opera. Most importantly, it was a world in miniature, crafted by its owner to be a spiritual haven. In essence, designing such a garden was akin to designing a complete, contemporary dream house.

A headache, brought on by matters at work, was my companion to the Canglang Pavilion on a gloomy morning. It is one of the oldest gardens in Suzhou, a city of canals and white-walled dwellings that stands as a living archive of China’s garden design, deep in the Jiangnan region, the historic centre of Chinese literati culture. Instead of heading directly for the famous structure, I circled behind to an unassuming cluster of buildings—the Cuilinglong.